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DG lands #4.2m deal

Data General has landed a nine-year contract worth #4.2 million with the Royal Liverpool Children's NHS Trust.

Under the terms of the contract, Data General will supply, implement and manage a Hospital Infor-mation Support System (HISS) to replace an existing architecture developed by SMS.

Data General's system is based on software from US company Meditech, a specialist in providing healthcare software systems. The software runs on a proprietary operating system, Magic, produced by Meditech. It provides for the automated flow of information between clinicians, nurses and hospital managers. The system will run on two dual AV9500 servers from Data General, supported by CLARiiON disk arrays. The system can also be linked to Hospital Information Support Systems at other hospitals around the country.

The trust needed a new IT system to link all of its departments simultaneously.

Its current system had been coming under increasing pressure as it operates the busiest Paediatric Accident and Emergency department in western Europe.

Data General has now started work on the project, which is scheduled to be completed within the next four to six months.

The contract was awarded under the terms of the government's PFI (Private Finance Initiative). Under the PFI, Data General shares the risk in the project with the hospital trust. In practice, this means that Data General's payment is dependent on delivering specified functionality within a set timescale. "It's about putting your money where your mouth is," explained Geoffrey Scott-Baker, marketing manager at Data General. "If we don't perform, we don't get paid."

Data General has participated in several PFI projects in the past, including one with the Scottish Health Service. This was a key factor in helping it with the Liverpool contract.

"We chose Data General to implement the new IT system because it understood the business requirements of the trust," explained John Phillips, head of IT at the Royal Liverpool Children's NHS Trust.